This month’s guest post is by Ed Abell, author of the award-winning My Father’s Keep, a deeply moving memoir of forgiveness, promise-keeping, and the power of love and grace over addiction and its deep effect on others. In this post, Ed shares his experience while he was in the process of writing his book and conveys well the importance of critique groups and their many benefits. To learn more about Ed’s journey and to purchase his book, which I had the honor to edit, please visit him at www.wisconsciousness.org.

Just the words “critique group” strike terror in most folks. Someone else will judge my work, in front of EVERYONE. They will all be better than me. Do I even belong in the same room as those other writers?

Yes. I know from experience. I had been an industrial designer. I drew pictures for a living. I’d never written anything in my life, but I found myself with a compelling story to tell. I had a book in me. A comprehensive writing class led to honing my skills in a critique group.

To learn to swim, you must enter the water. To write well, you must first find your voice. Where in this wonderful world do you look for that? Simple, you start banging on the keys or scribbling on the pad, writing what you think you should. You read it to the group and get reactions. Of course I sucked for starters, but I’d been a professional designer sitting in front of clients. Criticism wasn’t personal. Additionally, I had this wonderful chance to experiment and I had a very passionate story to tell.

I was writing a memoir so I read other memoirs that I felt had voice. It wasn’t my voice, and it’s not something you can copy, but I began to see what works. The best of them always seemed to be rendered without wasting a word.

My group averaged eight people a session. I learned straightaway that I could depend on good feedback from the group leader and several others. Many members were there to show off or simply read the same things over and over again. Fair enough. I was learning, and I knew who was there to help me.

We only brought 1,500 to 2,000 words with us to each session. Nobody knew the whole story, not even me at the time. That wasn’t the purpose of the critique. We all brought copies for the entire group. Each individual would pass his or her copies around and read it to the group. Then he or she sat in dreadful silence for ten minutes as each member wrote comments on the copies. The group leader would choose two or three people to comment, saving her own opinion for last. The author’s job was to sit and listen, without debating or defending him- or herself. All the marked-up copies was then returned to the author. I would read all the comments on my copies when I got home. Punctuation was generally ignored. (That’s what editors are for later in the writing process.) Sometimes there were question marks. Parts people liked were underlined. Everyone wrote notes in the margin. Those notes were the tiller, private comments, usually positive, sometimes extremely personal, and always a course correction or a steady as she goes. In a little over a year, I found I had a knack for similes (painting word pictures) and syntax (words arranged to create well-formed sentences).

Then came the day when I shared a scene. When I finished reading, the group leader canvased the members, “Who wants to go first?” One of the ladies, whose opinion I trusted, looked up at me from her copy of my paragraphs and said, “This is music.”

On the way home that night I felt like my mission had been accomplished. I could write. My voice turned out to be me, sitting quietly, brutally honest, and writing from my heart. Dipping into the same well of creativity and inspiration I had used as a designer, only using words rather than magic markers and pencils.

Not every critique group is the same. Some are even genre specific. Ask around and do some research. Also, ask yourself why you are joining a group. What do you expect to get out of the experience: learning, sense of community, networking, or perhaps finding your voice?

Our leader at Red Oak Writing paid me a wonderful compliment when my book, My Father’s Keep, won two international and two national self-publishing awards. She said, “You were successful because you came into the group knowing that you didn’t know. You were a sponge, unafraid to learn. That’s not everyone’s agenda.”

Terrifying yes, but it was worth passing through that portal.

I am honored to have Brian Forschner, author of the compelling Cold Serial: The Jack the Strangler Murders, his wife, Joyce, and his granddaughter as authors of the guest post this month. I met Brian about six years ago through an online writing group, and three years later, Brian began sharing with me his research for his book, which I ultimately had the privilege and honor of editing. As does Cold Serial, this post conveys Brian’s heart and passion for justice and his belief in the power of the written word.

Sixty students had tackled their eighth-grade capstone project. The theme was “Justice and the complexity of story.” The words of Malala, a favorite quote of the class, became a battle cry for the students: “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” So sixty “pens” and one teacher went to work. The project entailed searching for sixty “voices,” defined as individuals whose stories illustrate the concept of justice. Students interviewed their “voices” and then wrote a summary of their conversation. These stories were then compiled and published in a book entitled Hear My Story: Be My Voice.

The day to unveil the book finally arrived; the audience of parents, grandparents, and other middle school students did not know what to expect. The ceremony began with a moving ritual honoring the “voices.” Each was met by his or her student “pen,” presented with a white rose, symbolic of hope, escorted up the aisle of the one hundred-year-old chapel, and seated near the altar. A priest and a rabbi then offered reflections, which were followed by the son of an Auschwitz survivor whose story had spearheaded the project. Given time constraints, only a few of the “voices” spoke, each briefly telling his or her powerful story, and the audience was awestruck and deeply moved by their words. The speakers were a Western Saharan woman, ousted from her country by invading Moroccans, now a human rights activist; a granddaughter who spoke for her grandfather, a WWII decorated veteran, who was present; and a high school student who spoke of his mother, a beloved teacher at the school. He told of her long battle with depression, culminating in her suicide. Many in the chapel were brought to tears listening to his words. The audience realized they had just witnessed a sacred moment and responded to the stories in the only way they knew how: a standing ovation.

A minister closed with a prayer. The students then filed out and went to the school cafeteria for a luncheon in honor of the “voices.”

The “pens” may not have anticipated the impact of their efforts. This is true for us writers. We often do not know the impact of what we say. Perhaps that is why and how stories should be told, innocently, truthfully, vulnerably, and forcefully, placing the words upon the page, allowing the reader to digest, feel, know, critique, admire, and act. Then the writer moves on to tell the next story, and the next and the next. This book, Hear My Story: Be My Voice, is a witness to the nature of doing justice. It is telling story after story, each building on the veracity of the previous one, words woven together into a tapestry illustrating justice.

This was hard work for the students and their teacher. Writing is hard work. Justice is hard work. Writing is doing the hard work of justice. A key learning from this project was that, in every era, words can bring about justice and change.

Malala would be proud.